What It’s Like To Be Brackish
When you don’t get to choose your name, you know yourself only in a foreign language.
your mother cannot lay claim to you
and her history at the same time –
When you don’t get to choose your name
whether you belong or not is entirely up to your birth certificate.
Who would want to belong to this?
A world where names need no singing.
I fear the world where I suck it up and suffer / my voice stays one hue / my body, stranded, a stagnant pool / chlorinated / commodified.
When you don’t get to choose a future body, you stay small. eggshell sticks to you.
You find yourself
obsessing over an invisible ‘X’ on every registration form and important document.
Start to feel crazy seeing what could be
around every corner, reaching for the in-between -
When you don’t get to choose a future body you feel yourself? On the edge
of unwinding – the clock ticking down – you can’t hold the blood back this time.
God these walls are too thin, too stained with memory. I can hear too much of myself dying.
I am trying to recover
my body from the water/ from the rot / but I fear they are the same now.
How can you outgrow something stuck to you?
It is too cramped inside this chrysalis. I am a jar with a label meant to be scrubbed off, upcycled into something more fitting.
When your body is a host for unwanted growth, it is not a blessing. You’ll never understand
because it won’t happen to you.
It’s a real-life horror movie and I’m the victim in my mind / the killer in yours.
Ari Kamara (they/them) is a Bermudian writer, artist and filmmaker.
Instagram: @apocalypse_ari